Fishing from the shore at Roonga point north of Seisia. I had four land based trips to the north of our camp. I fished the rocky points in the hope of picking up a barra. The water was very clear, which made luring a little tricky. The bottom was generally coral below the low water mark. The black lip oysters are the biggest I have seen and all of the large ones had been opened "picked" very recently. The tides can be very fast and unpredictable to those used to tide patterns on the east coast. On my excursions I caught 11 species of fish. Here is a sample of some of the bigger fish.
Tarpon in this photo. On this morning I was completely spooled by a big trevally. My 15 kg line with the drag locked up made little impression. I also nailed a small coral trout. While he was about 40 cms long, I didn't have the heart to kill him and like all other fish I let him go.
Wolf herring. I kept this fish because he had died by the time I got the trebles out of him. I took him Seisia to give to Daniel Finch to use as bait. Both Daniel and the other guide were disappointed because we cut him in three to fit into the small upright freezer. They wanted him whole to troll for mackrel. They use fish this size to get the bigger mackrel.
Queenfish. My favourite lure, the popper, suckered this nice queenie. I landed about 5 queenies and quite a few small trevally during these trips.
Barra. Not as many as I woud have thought. The country looked very good with shallow muddy bays adjoining the points. The mud is not the oozy type, it as a lot of sand with it.

Daniel Finch ensured we got the whole treatment on the day he took us out fishing. Other activities included feeding sharks. here we see one of three that we fed tuna to over a period of about a half hour. It's difficult to get a good shot which shows the size but this shark is about 3 metres long.



















The next stop was in the mouth of the Jardine river where we stopped for lunch. There were two small crocs up on the beach as we motored in, but they were both too small and shy to get a good photograph. In the mouth of the river there is a resident groper. Daniel has been feeding him fairly regularly and he comes over and sits under the boat and waits for a feed. Susan prepares to feed him with the frame of one of our tuna.
Again it is difficult to get a good photo. This shot gives you some idea of the size of this fish. I estimate he's about 120 to 140 kilos. That is huge by any standard. Susan did a great job of fighting him for the tuna, holding him near the surface as he rolled trying to get the frame of the tuna free.
So Daniel had set his goals of making sure Susan caught a good sized fish, shark feeding, croc spotting and feeding the groper. We had a wonderful day and headed for Seisia about 2:30. The old slow boat took about two hours to get home but we both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Dan had a relaxing day as well.

Fishing with Daniel Finch from Seisia. For those who do not know, Daniel is Susan's second son. Dan is a guide working for John Charlton in Seisia. Daniel motors in to pick us up at the Seisia boat ramp. The weather conditions were not the best, winds to about 15 knots were predicted and did eventuate later in the day. Dan decided that we would travel south to take advantage of the tide. He predicted good tuna schools to the west of Red Island.
Dan nailed the first tuna. He had dropped one very early in the piece but I managed to gaff this one one for him. We kept them to feed to the sharks later in the day.
Guess who got the biggest fish for the day. Bloody beginners luck. A Northern Bluefin Tuna. We didn't feed this baby to the sharks. Daniel filleted it and Susan has been eating it for days.










Not to be outdone, I managed two mackerel tuna. This one on my G.Loomis rod. Both fish about the same size 4 /5 kilos